Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Family Bonding: Zion, RVs and Canyoneering

In the morning our itinerary suggested a two-mile roundtrip hike to a wide expanse of red sand dunes, where our kids promptly kicked off their shoes and started rolling and sliding. (Mom's failure to mention the lack of cable TV now was redeemed by permission to roll around in the dirt.) After shaking out shoes and hiking back to the RV, we ate a quick lunch and drove an hour to Virgin, Utah, and the Zion River Resort Campground (zionriverresort.com), carefully backing into one of 130 spaces in a round parking lot dotted with grassy plots, picnic tables, fire pits, and hookups for electricity and water.

The next rappel was 25 feet to the bottom, and as I peeked over the edge, I panicked; the first cliff began with a gradual slope, but this was a sheer vertical. You know you're in trouble when a 10-year-old has to talk you down. French, fed up with my whining, rappelled down with me into a pool of water. Jonas waded in to pull me out, and I consoled myself with the thought that this must be making us closer as a family. When Peter finished rappelling down, I helped him off with his drysuit. "You should have seen the kids up there," he said, smiling at them trying to warm up in the sun. "They were so scared their legs were shaking, but they did it. I was really proud. I'm glad I got to see that."

When we got back to the RV, my son spread his eight dollars' worth of newly acquired treasures on the table. Soon it would be back to e-mail, videogames, and American Idol. But at that moment it was just the four of us, gathered around a jumble of white, blue, and purple rocks. Jonas ran his fingers over a slab of quartz, remembering all that came before it: sand dunes, canyon trails, marshmallows on sticks. "That was great," he said. "That was really great."